


today is your day in the well

by factual



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/M, Gen Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-06
Updated: 2012-01-06
Packaged: 2017-10-29 02:14:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/314731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/factual/pseuds/factual
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[a bromantic university!AU] How John Watson falls into crisis, climbs back up, and befriends the strange 3 am violin-playing recluse living next door.</p>
            </blockquote>





	today is your day in the well

**Author's Note:**

> Guess the university. Thank you for reading!

-/-

i.

His favorite place to be was the architecture library. With high ceilings and endless rows of shelves, a barrier of books was formed about a centered row of tables. He felt comfortable working there; it wasn’t like the harsh lights and smelly roundabout corners of the main library where people pushed and shoved to buy the last Red Bull at the vending machines. Early last Sunday, a fight broke out in ominous room 209. There was no vending machine at Avery. The books provided protection. The columns were pretty to look at in moments of despair.

When there were no open spots, he preferred to wait outside, smoking cloves with the attractive Italian graduate students and listening to their talk about the delicacy with which Gustav Klimt implemented femme fatales as his arts subjects and that new comedian on 110th who really couldn’t handle bourbon.

Far in between as they did occur, these times were pleasant. They granted him an opportunity of pause; as the wind hovered in the space about his ears, he could see a horde of undergraduates exit the mathematics building. The Italians thought he was one of them.

“No,” said John, “I’m an undergraduate.”

Upon further interrogation:

“Er, no not studying the fine arts either. I want to be a biochemistry major.”

ii.

College life took place within a disorganized drawer. You reached in, about as likely to pull out a cigarette butt as the second season of _How I Met Your Mother_. If you could accept this, you could accept anything. The key was detachment and John was still learning. So, instead, he felt that there existed a distance he would never bridge. He thought it was the result of a displaced childhood that began in a brownstone off Oxford Street and ended up in Virginia. Lost and quiet, he loved after people and places he would never really understand.

People assumed he was an international and when he said no I went to school in Loudoun County, Virginia, they either assumed he’d mispronounced London or he was an international who had gone to an American boarding school to better his chances of acceptance to college.

He would’ve been a dull international student. There were many of them here, all from places with truly different cultures and languages; an accent and fondness for Harrods teapots could not compete with that. John Watson was not sad but two months into his freshman year he began to feel ambivalent, with a storm’s worth of thoughts repressed far inside his chest. Everything seemed better off not voicing. He was not sure what had happened to him. And it did not hurt, neither was he pained; yet it existed, piled up, and refused to leave.

The seasonal transition into fall seemed to justify him. The sudden chill he got every time he pulled open the door to the building of his chemistry lecture reinforced his justification. When he looked across the lecture hall and surveyed the blank eyes of his classmates, he wondered if he was not alone. It was a late evening class and the room was barely lit. Four Asian boys who were planning to rush were already fast asleep. He watched a girl fiddle with her phone before tucking it into her peacoat (wool, dark grey, bought secondhand); then she took out a bottle of nail polish and began applying a fresh layering. The instructor, a middle-aged man who might have passed for a distant cousin of Robert Downey Jr., set up his powerpoint on quantum mechanics. He made an attempt to engage the class; the lights turned off.

One weekend, he and a group of floormates set out to crash an upperclassmen dorm. It was nearing midnight when they finished a leftover stash of vodka and cheese crackers. John let the shot burn his throat and he closed his eyes and he opened them again. He remembered to leave a bottle of water by his bed.

Mike Stamford led them out. In a distant, friendly way, John enjoyed Mike’s company, and he liked his genuine antics and humility. Singlehandedly, he managed to make everyone at ease with one another; with the jubilating effects of alcohol beginning to set in, conversation was bouncing. “So I’ve got a friend who says he can get us inside without our needing to leave our IDs with the guard downstairs,” he announced. Mike had a friend for everything.

“Why would we need to leave our IDs behind?” asked Kainee, a pretty girl whom John suspected Mike harbored a crush on.

“Because it’s an upperclassman dorm and they don’t like the freshlings barging in whenever they want,” retorted Greg. He did not quite understand the concept of personal space and was now walking close behind John. Every so often, he stepped on the back of John’s left shoe and when John looked back he cackled.

“Regulations, chaps,” Mike was saying, “you know it’s not my decision. My friend is trying to get us past that so long we put up a convincing front and—” He was the natural conciliator. Like John, he wanted to be a doctor.

So they ran up the steps to the dorm and, true to word, Mike’s friend signed them in. There was no trouble and nobody’s ID was taken for collateral; guard gave each of them a meaningful fistbump and said to Kainee, “Peace out.”

They took the elevator to the twelfth floor. Mike’s friend knocked on the third room down the hall. There was house music, a loud stench of cologne, and cheap booze. “Oh God, yes,” said Kainee, and Mike Stanford bumbled after her.

John was handed a plastic cup. The drink tasted raw and ashful. It did not burn nor was it strong. That was what it was. A girl intently texting stopped and looked up, not at him, but his eyes. John looked away. “Do you want a drink?”

“Sure,” said the girl. “Tonight’s came out of my pocket, in case you’re wondering whose alcohol you’re consuming,”, she added.

“A-ah. Thanks.”

“Cheers.”

She looked so disinterested. “Funny enough, this isn’t my suite. A friend of mine has commandeered ours for a rendezvous he’s having tonight. God.” She smiled. “Maybe I should be afraid of what he’s doing.”

“Right. Right.”

“You’re not a junior, are you?”

“I guess not.”

“You’re too nice to be a junior. You must be a first-year. They all have this quality.”

“Quality?”

“Innocence. Hope. Dreams. A regular range of emotional bullshit.”

It was bit of an insulting thing to say. “Oh.”

She finished her drink. “Give me another.”

Until an RA caught wind of the fact that there were minors who were not supposed to be there and demanded immediate evacuation, they somehow kept talking. They talked about literature, why you never have a relationship with someone who lives on the same floor, race issues, classism, classes, Azealia Banks, and then the girl, who professed she was sincerely not drunk, kissed him. “This doesn’t mean anything,” she said, and kept kissing him because the room was dimly-lit, the number of people had seriously dwindled, and maybe there was nothing else to do.

John did not recognize anyone. Mike Stamford was gone, Kainee was gone, and even the strange one, Greg, was gone. He was the only one who had remained, with a strange girl’s tongue in his mouth, him somehow reciprocating, perhaps enjoying it, his mind growing dull and hungry and desirous.

What happened? He wanted to make love to her, and kiss the line of her jaw and touch the nape of her neck that looked the most vulnerable spot of her body. She had prominent, beautiful features and her lips were soft and he wanted her so much. She knew everything. She was worldly and sophisticated.

John would look back not quite recalling the details but neither regretting it. She sat with one leg draped over his and as they kissed they moved closer to one another. He wanted to know her name.

“It’s Anthea,” she said, already returning to her texting. He did not know if it was her real name. He decided that he did not care.

iii.

Just after three, John staggered across campus toward his dorm. He spent five minutes trying to swipe in with his Starbucks card instead of his ID and pressed the elevator button for the sixth floor instead of the ninth.

Watching the elevator close, John felt himself plummet. It was just, just this: back at the strange suite he had been allowed to act in a persona removed from his present one and now that he had returned the difference was devastating. Before he had possessed his own “range of emotional bullshit” and now he had lost it.

The hall was empty, a rare phenomena. He shook his head, but could not see straight. I’m not _that_ drunk, he thought; he wasn’t sure if he could believe himself. However, as he made his way down the hall he began to hear a familiar screeching sound, the distinct pulling of violin strings.

He was all too familiar the noise and knew who it belonged to: the recluse living in 946.

“Chriiist.”

The recluse, called Sherlock Holmes, had moved in three weeks after the start of school. His only provided explanation was that his “prior living situation had been unmendable” and then he disappeared into his room, refusing to socialize with his neighbors and rarely coming out. In fact, the only reason why they knew he was still alive was because of the distinctive violin playing which permeated through walls and glided with a sashay Nina (ballerina, 934) would’ve been jealous of. It came on and off sporadically but when he went at it he could play for hours on end. An inquiry revealed that he was neither a member of the school orchestra nor any of the string instrumental groups.

Despite living next door, John had only seen him twice, and from afar. They had yet to be formally introduced. Sherlock Holmes was a different kind of fellow. No one knew what he was studying or what courses he was enrolled in. No one had ever seen him in any kind of classroom setting and it was probable Holmes did not even go to class. He did not participate in activities; on his own floor he was a “resident” rather than a member of a close-knit community that even John was part of.

It was three fucking a.m. and John was buzzed and the violin was sorrowful and slightly off-key. He wondered why no one had knocked on 946’s door but he suspected that they were all slightly intimidated by him. Afraid of what? Why should they be afraid of this hermit when they had strength in numbers? John knew he wasn’t thinking straight. He banged his fist on Sherlock’s door. Again. The violin persisted. Again. The violin eased off. “Thank _you_.”

The door opened and Sherlock Holmes, dressed in a night robe, said: “What?”

“Can you ever possibly shut up for once? You’re clogging the whole hall with your—your damn playing!”

“Oh.”

“You’ve been playing the violin all night. No one can ever get any sleep around here because of you and I don’t think you’re dumb enough to not know it.”

Holmes looked at him. “You’ve got alcohol on your breath. I can hear the socials on the floor and there haven’t been any tonight; ergo you’ve been out and wouldn’t know of any violin playing.”

“T-that’s the thing you do isn’t it? I’ve heard of it. Well shut up, shut up, I can’t sleep when there’s a per-perfuncting sound all up and down, up and down.”

“Interesting,” he didactically continued, “I haven’t been playing the violin, but judging by the pent-up anger in your voice (though that might be induced by the vodka cocktails you’ve been inhaling because you don’t seem the confrontational sort) you must live next door. You must be John Watson.”

At the mention of his John sobered up; or rather, he made the attempt to stand a little taller and sway a little less. “W-what?”

“You’re drunk, John Watson,” said Holmes. “I don’t have time for this. What did you want?”

John Watson did not know either. But there had been no violin tonight and he was far gone. “I want peace of mind,” he drawled out, and collapsed.

iv.

John woke up in a hospital bed.

“How are you feeling?”

“Uh, um, fine. Wait. Huh. How did I get here—”

“I brought you here,” said Sherlock Holmes. “I’ll help you recollect; 3:27 am, you knocked on my door early this morning to complain about a nonexistent noise. The result of a long-held grudge. People do love grudges and they love expressing their anger in a state of intoxication because they wouldn’t do so otherwise. You passed out five seconds before I was expecting it. How much did you drink?”

“Not a lot. I made sure to—”

“Wrong. You went over twice the limit your body can take, can calculate BAC on your own. And these forms, too, need to be filled out. Do you have medical insurance?”

“What the hell is going on? Why am I here? I’m perfectly fine.”

“A student passes out drunk; the reasonable thing to do is to call the university’s 24-hour emergency medical service, or so our alcohol education would like to have us believe. You won’t be okay for another ninety minutes.”

“What?”

“Or are you looking for a sentimental reason?”

John glanced down at his body. He was still in his clothes from the night before. He smelled, no longer of alcohol but disinfectant. He had a headache; he remembered most of what had happened and he remembered kissing Anthea and he remembered knocking on 946’s door by accident.

No, it hadn’t been had accident. He’d knocked to complain but Holmes hadn’t been playing. Everything Holmes said was true and how did he know anyway—Mike Stamford had told him once about Holmes’s ability to “deduce and see through people, real detective-like”. Well, it all made sense except for Holmes himself.

“Why are you here?” John asked.

“It’s important to maintain good ties with the EMS, don’t you think? Had an idea, though no concrete proof, of their efficiency. With you passed out at my doorstep, I was granted an opportunity. Why did I stay? I needed to ask around for a bit and happened to return just as you came to.”

“What you’re saying is you weren’t being a Good Samaritan, you were just running an experiment?”

“Technically an experiment entails multiple runs and oh, I really won’t need them unless you are willing to participate. Otherwise, yes, I suppose. In case you’re wondering, this is the non-sentimental explanation.”

“Right, oh right. Sure. No, I don’t really like false sentiment. Can I get out of here?”

“Well,” Holmes said, “you can always run out, unnoticed. Or, you can continue to sit there like a good boy and wait for the bureaucratic nurse to stop by, give you an unnecessary medical check-up, and maybe fill out twelve patient history surveys. It’s your choice.”

Already he could see why Holmes would be instantly disliked. Caustic and unforgiving, he spoke in a spitfire terse manner, like he was always on the verge of making some great breakthrough but had the compulsive urge to explain all the evidence leading up. He did not mitigate anything and he had a way of making observational remarks that made you question your own appearance and character, a most unnerving capacity.

“Are you suggesting you know a way to get out of here without being seen?”

Holmes raised a quizzical eyebrow and said, almost incredulous, “If you trust me.”

v.

Their association began as such. It was not, as in the case of Rick and Renault, the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Curious would be a better term to describe them, Sherlock and John. He came to think of Sherlock as just that, Sherlock. They both hailed from the same city and would have likely gone to nearby secondary schools had it not been for John’s move to America.

As was Sherlock’s habit, he correctly told his family’s reasons for emigrating their mother country, and he made a brilliant attempt at sketching the members of the Watson clan. John was fascinated and made no secret of it. It was a strange phenomenon at first for Sherlock.

“Why do you do say things like ‘Brilliant’ or ‘Amazing’? Not that I mind.”

“Well someone’s got to appreciate genius, right?”

John found out Sherlock had no planned future in mind; at least not one that the university might prepare him for. He took classes he thought sounded catchy, which could be anything from Weapons of Mass Destruction to Free Press and Society (a course in which one of the professors was none other than the university president himself).

“I find standardized education dull. I can’t imagine staying in school for more than a year, maybe two.”

“But a college education isn’t standardized. That’s the point. It’s much more critical and analytical than—”

“Perhaps for your kind of people.”

Sherlock was a genius and all too aware of it.

“Then why bother coming here at all? It does cost a pretty penny. International student that you are. You pay the full price.”

“I was given a choice. Attending university in the United Kingdom wouldn’t have worked at all, see, of course I had to go abroad. Obviously I wouldn’t come to a place like New York unless I had a connection; lo and behold, I did. And finances—money! God! If there was one thing I find useless.”

“What do you mean attending Oxbridge wouldn’t have worked? With your intellect, it shouldn’t have been a problem of acceptance.”

“There were,” said Sherlock, “other considerations.”

“Like?”

“John,” said Sherlock.

“Okay, okay. However, I don’t think it’s fair.”

“What isn’t fair?”

“You can tell everything about me by looking—”

“Observing.”

“—observing me. And yet I don’t know anything about you.”

“Tell me what you see.”

John tried. He wasn’t sure where to start, whether if Sherlock’s stiff upper lip came from his father or if his at times slight gait in step was the result of a good essay grade. He did not know how to infer a smoking habit and he did not really want to. What he didn’t realize was that he too was capable of vigilance, he simply did not know how to organize himself.

“Nah.”

“You didn’t even try. Pathetic.”

“Yeah, not like it matters.”

To a certain extent, it did not. Sherlock was a subconsciously eager explainer and he was very good at distilling topics John would have easily dismissed, like types of cigar ashes or how moss forms after rainfall.

There were things Sherlock just seemed to _know_ , and John came to know them as well. He taught John that the fifth window of the ninth floor of the library was never locked. You could climb out onto the roof; from there, you tiptoed to the edge and looked down and never looked back.

He taught John the underground tunnel system of the school; he knew where exits lay and doors were hidden. “Make a right here,” he said, and they ducked under an official tape and traversed from one corner to another. The tunnels were constructed long ago during World War II when the university temporarily served as a quickie training base for marines. Sherlock knew their entire history. He knew where they were under surveillance and where they were not.

“Good place, here,” he said once, and while John tried to regain his sense of direction, Sherlock took out a small bag.

“Is that—” John asked, even after he realized what was inside.

“Helps me detach,” Sherlock murmured, holding the joint in his mouth and lighting it with the ease of someone who has done it multiple times. John had not thought of Sherlock had a stoner but it explained certain aspects of Sherlock’s life that had previously perplexed him before.

(He was especially disconnected from reality at times. He could go days without eating; he could magically develop an appetite. He occasionally smoked, but none more so than everyone else.)

“I dislike eating, generally,” Sherlock said without being prompted. He had such a grip for the tendency of human thought (and John was still getting used to it). “It slows me down. I try not to eat unless I have to. I have a reserve system and there’s a little bar that indicates how much fuel I have remaining. I operate accordingly. Nothing gets wasted.”

“Well this isn’t terribly healthy.”

“Health? God, don’t even start.” He took another aimless puff.

“What—you have other addictions you haven’t told me about? Like what, alcohol? Illicit drugs?”

Sherlock gave him a disinterested deadpan of a look. “Not my doctor, John. I know you want to be one so maybe you ought to instead examine Mike Stamford’s drinking problem.”

“Everyone drinks.”

“And he’s _allergic_. How about Greg Davidson’s touching complex?”

“So he likes human contact.”

“Too much for your taste.”

“It’s nothing I can resolve.”

“Or Kainee Hunter’s misadventures in promiscuity? Sex-positivity aside, if you don’t exercise precaution—”

He felt his ears go red. “Why would you—never mind I don’t want to know—but. Why, Sherlock?”

“Do I need a reason for noticing? People lie, John. You can’t trust them and they never tell the whole story but there are other ways around. Deduction through observation offers nothing but the truth. Anyway relying solely on verbal communication is boring.”

“Then I’d like to make a deduction myself.”

“Fine.”

“You deflect your problems by drawing attention to the faults of others. Though you are forward with your own habits you never go so far as to denounce yourself or to admit your mistake. You never talk about your family which means you haven’t got one or you’re estranged. Since it seems like you’re not reliant on financial aid I’m guessing it’s the latter. Distant . . . from your family. You want to be on your own. You go far away, across an ocean. The result? A meandering path of independence with no final destination because you insist on losing yourself to your own human flaws.”

“Oh good, very good,“ said Sherlock Holmes.

“Deduction? Sure.”

“You do wonderfully, after all.”

“Things I’ve noticed for a while but took time for me to really understand—wait, what?”

“What do you mean by understand?”

“You. Your strangeness.”

“Am I strange to you?”

“Well—”

“Ah, right, this is when you spiel on about the normality of society and how one’s lack of adherence to it causes alienation and spinsterdom. Spare me, John Watson. I’ve heard it before.”

Right then, John smiled. “I was going to say—no, nothing.”

“What?”

He sat down on the ground next to Sherlock. His fingers felt numb from the cold of the underground system and he could hear Sherlock droning out the noises in his head.

They did not have a friendship. John did not know the name for it but he was surprised to find that he could relish in the nothingness, the entirely equivocal atmosphere they had cultivated all on their own. He found that he did not have to fear the uncertainty and the funk. He sat down on the ground next to Sherlock. His fingers felt numb from the cold of the underground tunnel system. He could smell the burnt up tips; he could hear Sherlock droning out the noises in his head. At this moment, he was alive and glad for it.

“And yet,” Sherlock was saying, “here you are. Here _we_ are.”


End file.
